“Citrix’s complete suite of platform and software enables virtualisation at any level - including XenDesktop® for end point virtualization, XenServer® for server virtualization and XenApp® for consolidating applications. This complemented with their ease of use made them the clear choice for this deployment. We believe that this futuristic virtualisation framework will be a cornerstone in our next phase of the company growth.” said Thomson Thomas, Senior Vice President - IT (Head Business Systems and Technology) at HDFC Standard Life Insurance.
HDFC Life continues to have one of the widest reach among private life insurance companies with almost 500 branches in India touching customers in over 900 cities and towns. When HDFC Life decided to do away with legacy infrastructure, it came in the wake of a few challenges faced by the company. With the proliferation of high-powered tablets and mobiles and improvement in connectivity, the company was looking for a powerful solution that could leverage the proliferation of connected mobile devices for customer engagement in addition to their branch offices. The other challenge that HDFC Life wanted to overcome was linked to information security, as it was proving difficult for the IT department to enforce security in a conventional desktop environment. In the context of enabling these business imperatives, HDFC Life chose Citrix as its desktop virtualisation partner and deployed XenDesktop®.
“We are extremely pleased to partner with a life insurance major such as HDFC Life to create a mobile-enabled, secure work environment through our desktop virtualisation solution,” said Sanjay Deshmukh, Area Vice President, India Subcontinent, Citrix. “Increasingly, financial institutions are realising the value of adopting technologies such as desktop virtualisation and mobility to be more responsive to customer needs. In its pursuit of business growth, HDFC Life has been amongst the forerunners to enable workforce mobilisation, resulting in better productivity and enhanced customer centricity.” he further added.
Post a successful PoC of 30 thin clients across 10 locations, HDFC Life decided to extend the benefits through an organisation wide roll-out. Completed in two phases, the company currently uses 2000 thin clients that run the virtualised desktop. While Citrix XenDesktop® was initially deployed for the sales function, after witnessing the host of benefits, HDFC Life has decided that the desktops of other functions such as training and operations would also be replaced with the VDI platform, where most applications can be accessed faster as they don’t run on a local PC. The company ported all its business applications namely sales tracking system, sales data and reports and the learning management system on thin client. The deployment of Citrix XenDesktop has yielded a host of benefits for HDFC Life. The speed at which the user could access applications was phenomenally better than that in the desktop environment. Also, with 2000 thin clients being utilised in a coverage ratio of 1:3, employees don’t require dedicated terminals, thereby optimising their terminal capacities.
About Citrix
Citrix (NASDAQ:CTXS) is the cloud computing company that enables mobile workstyles - empowering people to work and collaborate from anywhere, accessing apps and data on any of the latest devices, as easily as they would in their own office—simply and securely. Citrix cloud computing solutions help IT and service providers build both private and public clouds - leveraging virtualization and networking technologies to deliver high-performance, elastic and cost-effective services for mobile workstyles. With market leading solutions for mobility, desktop virtualization, cloud networking, cloud platforms, collaboration, and data sharing, Citrix helps organizations of all sizes achieve the kind of speed and agility necessary to succeed in an increasingly mobile and dynamic world. Citrix products are in use at more than 260,000 organizations and by over 100 million users globally. Annual revenue in 2012 was $2.59 billion. Learn more at www.citrix.com.
